Can 'Victoria' Really Be The New 'Downton Abbey' For PBS?

Actress Jenna Coleman, who plays Queen Victoria in PBS's Downton Abbey replacement series Victoria – but will it be a hit? (Photo: Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images)

Downton Abbey was a smash drama hit for PBS – can any other British show ever fill its beautifully-polished shoes? Well, PBS has its fingers crossed that Victoria – another period drama from ITV, the same U.K. network as Downton Abbey – will do just that when it premieres tonight (Jan. 15, 2017).

A lavish, based-on-the-true-story series about the life of the young Queen Victoria – starting from the moment she ascends to the British throne in 1837, aged 18 – Victoria's eight episodes are even airing in PBS's traditional Downton Abbey slot (ie Sunday nights from January).

Will Victoria be a hit for PBS? If the British ratings are anything to go by – the show aired there last autumn – then the answer is "yes", it will be a hit. But not a hit on the scale of Downton Abbey.

Victoria launched in the U.K. with an overnight rating of 5.7 million viewers. That showed promise, but it fell well short of Downton Abbey's overnight launch figure of 7.7 million viewers in 2010. (To put that into context: ITV is one of only two mass-market networks in the U.K. It's hard for an ITV drama to launch with less than 4 million viewers; 5 million or more indicates a potential hit; more than 7 million is very rare.)

Downton Abbey's first series went on to "consolidate" (the U.K. ratings term for the eventual accrued audience of the show, including catch-up and recorded viewing) at nearly 10 million viewers; the show peaked in the U.K. at season 3, which scored an average consolidated rating of 11.9 million viewers. Those stratospheric figures are, pretty much, unheard of in modern British TV ratings.

Victoria's first season consolidated in the U.K. at an average of 7.7 million viewers – just over 20% lower than Downton Abbey's first season. If Victoria gets 80% of the U.S. ratings of Downton Abbey, PBS will be overjoyed. Downton Abbey often scored 13 million U.S. viewers for the public service channel, compared to more like 3 million for its comparable British import Call the Midwife (which, ironically, is a much bigger hit than Victoria in the U.K.)

Of course, Victoria will only score high ratings if it's a great show. And those 8 million U.K. viewers weren't wrong – it's actually pretty good. Jenna Coleman, recently of Doctor Who fame, shines in the title role as Queen Victoria, and is ably supported by Rufus Sewell as her prime minister, advisor and crush Lord Melbourne. Daisy Goodwin's script – informed by Queen Victoria's own diaries – focuses squarely on the aspects of Victoria's life that feel the most like Downton Abbey: the machinations among servants below stairs, and family intrigue between warring factions at court.

But there's one thing that might count against Victoria with U.S. viewers who avidly consume British costume drama. In the U.K., Victoria was broadcast from August to October – before the launch of Netflix's The Crown in November. If U.S. viewers have watched The Crown, then Victoria will seem pale and a bit dull by comparison.

For a start, The Crown is so much more lavish – production budgets almost always stay supposedly confidential, but reports suggest that The Crown cost north of £4 million ($4.9 million) an episode to make, compared to more like £1.2 million ($1.5 million) for Victoria.

Creatively, too, both The Crown and Downton Abbey trounce Victoria. Downton Abbey, free of the constraints of being a literary adaptation or a true story, introduced the kind of salacious storylines (like the gay duke-on-footman snog in the first episode) that period drama had previously shunned. And The Crown managed to get inside – or, at least, to seem to get inside, which is as good as – Queen Elizabeth II's young head in a way that Victoria just didn't with Queen Victoria.

Victoria is a good show, and PBS's loyal viewers will like it. But it's not as good as The Crown – and it's certainly no Downton Abbey.